A monologue weaved of fifteen iconic cinematic women into a single entity - “Penelope”. It is a reflection on the construction of the woman as staged fantasy generated in cinema. Through the removal of everything but the woman in the frame, Penelope is constantly in the spotlight on a dark stage.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I’m appropriating (re-contextualizing) this known footage precisely, to play with collective memory and collective fantasy. Penelope deconstructs the viewer’s memories and fantasy of the cinematic woman they grew to know and that which shaped our understanding of the idea of a woman today. Penelope addresses a genealogy of a fantasy, the fantasy of the woman as generated in cinema, using female starlets that were directed by male directors. The title Penelope refers to The Odyssey, a primitive foundation of a fictional woman fantasy that in the literary history represented a completely different fantasy, and so I enhance the cinematic contribution to the shaping of this fantasy over time.

앤 오렌

Ann Oren

Ann was born in Tel-Aviv, received a BFA in Film and an MFA in Fine Arts, both from the School of Visual Arts. Attended Skowhegan. Her works were featured at The Hammer Museum, Moscow Biennale for young art, The Tel Aviv Museum, Rochester Contemporary Art Center, WRO Art center's Media Art Biennale, PS122, APEXART, 3
Legged Dog Art Center, FIESP Cultural Centre - Ruth Cardoso and MediaLab Prado. Recent screenings: Anthology Film Archives, The Tel-Aviv Cinematheque, The Carnegie Mellon Film Festival and The Social Media Film Festival (recipient of special jury award). Residencies include: HomeBase (Berlin), Spiro Arts (UT), I-Park (CT), NARS (NY), and NES (Iceland). Oren is a grant recipient from The Jerome Foundation, The School of Visual Arts, NARS Foundation and the National Board of Reviews, NY.